I woke up as fresh as could be after only 5 hours. Everybody else was still snoring, so I sneaked away and made a pot of coffee. As it was brewing I went over to the windows and looked out upon The Village interior. I was a little shocked to see a bunch of people entering. When my coffee was ready I poured a cup and made my way downstairs. As I walked I studied the new faces. There was no mistaking our latest additions. These were all Indigenous of Pacific islands and their cousins. The huge Maori men of New Zealand were impossible to miss.

I made my way to the main entrance and found the man who seemed in charge. A large Maori man with a huge smile on his face greeted me.

“Chief of all Chiefs, I am Chief Kai Kane, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

I shook his hand and said, “Chief Kai, this is surprising, I wasn't expecting Natives from far away isles.”

He had a look of relief on his face and said, “Thank the Gods we had a place to fall back on. Most of the islands were hit very hard, not many of us left. There are about 3,000 of my people from New Zealand here, but you have Natives from all over the place. Tongans, Samoans, Tahitians, Polynesians, you name it we have some of them.”

I said, “No one from Australia?”

He shook his head, “I have a dozen Aboriginal that came with me from my homeland. They were trapped in my country when this all happened and were forced to come with us, but from what they tell me their people will not be leaving Australia. We were told, however, to get a move on it because Natives from Hawaii were coming in right on our tail. I would expect a large number of them. If the rumors are true Hawaii has been all but taken over!”

I said, “Okay, I am going to go look into that. Hey, by the way, I have a war buff for the tribe that I can use during battle. It must be cast during a tribal war chant. Isn't it the Maori People that specialize in Hakas? Think you can have someone come up with something simple that we can translate into English and teach all of the People?”

He smiled. “It would be my pleasure. We can have a waiata made up in no time at all.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man, settle your people in. Make yourselves at home. I am sure we will be seeing each other around The Village.”

I took a walk out to where the intake of people was. There was a distinct difference to the look of the people I was seeing. The first thing that came to my mind was, “These folks are going to need to become acclimated to the temperature real quick and we are going to need a lot of new warm clothing!”

I was people watching when I started to see bright Aloha shirts coming into the view. I walked down to them and a Hawaiian couple smiled at me. “You are sipping a Kona coffee aren't you? I can make that smell out from here.”

I nodded. “Best coffee on the planet, wouldn't drink anything else!”

He held out his hand. “Kala Alexander, nice to meet you. We lived right by Mauna Loa on the Big Island.”

I smiled, “Well I am happy to say that the shop here sells it, so we will never run out, but this entire city is surrounded by greenhouses if you would like to take a shot at farming it?”

Kala looked at his wife. “Hmm something to think about.”

“Is there some kind of Chief that came in with you? I kind of run this place and want to meet him.”

Kala shook his head. “Ack! You are the big Chief! Sorry I didn’t recognize you. We didn't really have a Chief, per se, we did bring the Governor of Hawaii with us, I guess he is in charge of us. Kala pointed out the direction of the Governor and I shook his hand, said goodbye and headed that way.

I found Governor Daniel and had a brief chat. He told me he was assigned to sit at the Chief's table and after a very brief conversation I headed into the town. I had seen a bunch of groups of hunters going down that way and wanted to see what was going on.

The city was a hive of activity. Groups of hunters from The Village were meeting up with men from the city by the inn and were forming groups. An android was standing outside and talking to one group at a time. I walked up to it and said, “Kelli, what is going on?”

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It said, “I am coordinating areas for different groups of hunters to go to so we don't have overlap with groups already out there Chief.”

I said, “Huh, that's a good idea, we should build a big hunter's hall or something so that we have an official meeting place for this rather than outside of the Inn.”

The android said, “I forecast most of our hunters will be heading south onto the islands in the future. A building down by the cruise ship area would be optimal.”

I nodded, “Yes, makes sense. I will have a new building put up by tomorrow. Good work Kelli!”

The sun was rapidly rising in the morning sky, so I headed back to The Village to get ready to meet my group. As I made my way to the central tree I noticed a large group of people sitting in an open space among the trees. There had to be a couple hundred of them and in the center sitting cross-legged was a familiar looking spirit.

I went over near the group and as I got close I could smell the familiar scent of a certain herb my companion liked to smoke. Before I could say anything Tor turned to me and said “Good morning Chief, would you like to join our smoke in?”

I said, “Tor what is going on here? Are all of these warriors high right now?”

Tor said, “Relax Debby Downer, it's the 21st century and bud is perfectly legal now!”

I looked at the crowd and they were all meditating not even noticing I was there. “Well, yes, I know it's legal, but what are they doing?”

Tor gave me a goofy smile. “These are all people who need to learn mana manipulation. Opening their third eyes makes this a lot easier. I'm not just introducing bad habits here Chief. I am working, imparting valuable skills here. Don't you have anything better to do? I am a little busy right now.”

I chuckled at him. “Okay, but I am about to roust my party and head back down to the cruise ship dungeon. You might want to join us when we head down there.” Tor nodded and turned his head back to his student stoners.

I made my way up to my office and sat down at the city management area and pulled up the map. I looked down by where the Nat Geo ship was docked and saw the space where our old Juneau public library used to sit. I made a big longhouse in the same style as the inn and named it Hunters Hall.

I called out to Kelli, “Heya Kelli, I built a hunters hall down by the docks to the south. Can you make a general public announcement and have a couple droids installed there and work out a system please?”

Kelli responded, “On it Chief. I am going to need you, Sam, and Onida to start coming up with some quests. We can put them on big boards by the entrance to the hall.”

I said, “We can make quests!?”

She replied, “Oh yeah, The ruling family can make all kinds of quests. Bounties, dungeon clears, ingredient hunts, scouting trips, etc. It is one of the many things that our tax pays out to. I also wanted to tell you that our city dungeon is now opened for business!”

I said, “All right Kelli, sheesh just add another thing to my honey dew list. Anything else of note that you want to tell me before I head out?”

She said, “There is one thing Chief, there is a group of five people that are non-local out by the airport. They met up with one of our hunting parties a few minutes ago. They have a bunch of animal furs that they want to trade. When they were told about the oath to enter the city they did not seem very enthused. I propose we build a couple little trading posts by our border entrances. If someone wants to trade with us but will not take the oath, we will have facilities to accommodate this.”

I said, “Sounds good to me Kelli, make it happen. See if we have some people with trading skills to work the buildings.”

Kelli said, “On it Chief.”

Onida entered the office looking ready to go. She was in armor and wore a few weapons.

I said, “Kelli can you contact my party and tell them we are headed down to the cruise ship?” I looked over at Onida. “Been a busy morning. I built a hunters hall, a couple of trading posts, the city dungeon is opened, and we have our first visitors incoming from the airport area.”

She thought for a second and said, “We should go meet them. They might have some information that could be useful.”

It was still very early morning and we had a little time to spare so I agreed. “Let's get out there fast then, I want to completely clear that dungeon today. See about the possibility of making that a full time rotating dungeon. We have a long list of things we need to do.”

We portaled to the stables and were out riding in minutes. As we came to the Twin Lakes area a couple of miles from town we ran into the party being guided by a couple of our hunters. There were five of them. Three men, a woman, and a teenage girl. They looked haggard and beat up.

We pulled up to them and I said, “Hello, I am Chief Blackbeard, can you tell me where you came from and what your intentions are?”

A weary man stepped forward. His clothes were torn up and he was carrying a handmade spear. “Hi, my name is Josh. This is my wife Sunny and our daughter Star. We had been on an adventure vacation out of Juneau. We were with a large group camping out by the Mendenhall Glacier. We are all that is left...”

I said, “I am sorry to hear that, we have lost over 90% of our population in Juneau. It is a safe zone now with no monsters spawning inside of it's limits, but if you intend on staying you must take an oath of confidentiality or you will be turned away.”

Josh said, “I'll be truthful with you Chief. We are very weary of taking an oath to anyone, but we are on our last legs. We will take your oath.”

I smiled at the man. “I am glad to hear that Josh. The city is only two miles away, we will escort you in.”

The entire group looked like they had hope for the first time in a long while. I gave my horse over to the mother and daughter and walked besides them. “Let's get you folks to safety. Welcome to my city.”

On the way back to the town Josh told me that the group had started out as fifty people with a pair of guides. Monsters started coming out of the lake and had killed ten people before anyone even knew what was going on. Their two guides had the entire group turtle up and try to figure out what was happening. They originally had a lot of guns and ammo in the tough company of adventures, but eventually they started to run out. By the time that they had started the five mile trek back to the airport almost everyone had been killed off. The two guides had felt guilty for not being able to get everyone out alive and had sacrificed themselves in the end holding off a pack of cats so Josh and his family could run away. A group of hunters from the Village had found them and escorted them back to where Blackbear had found them.

Blackbear took their oath, led them to the inn, and deposited them with Kelli until they figured out what to do with them. The family was so shell-shocked that they barely noticed what the city had become. Onida and Blackbear mounted up and headed down to the cruise ship dungeon.

It was time to go to war...